Written By Ken Hulsey
With Halloween quickly approaching, I wanted to share a little ghost story from my past. Back in the 1980s, I lived in Albuquerque, in a subdivision known as Heritage Hills. When my family moved in during the late 1970s, this area was brand new. In fact, these were the only homes located on the furthest north side of the city. Beyond our subdivision, there was nothing but open desert, with dirt roads and a few scattered structures. This area remained undeveloped for quite some time.
In the fall of 1986, a friend of mine was having some issues with his girlfriend and needed someone to talk to, so we decided to drive out into the desert to find a secluded spot for a private conversation. We found a church parking lot that offered a nice view of the city, so we decided to stop there. I looked at a map of Albuquerque and found a church called Hope of the Desert; it's the only one I found in the general area. However, I can't say for certain if that's the church we were at or not.
We had been sitting there talking for a while when suddenly, an old pickup truck appeared on the road in front of the church. This was odd because we had both been looking out the car windows at the city, and our conversation hadn't been so in-depth that someone could have driven up unnoticed. The truck and its driver just sat there for several minutes. My friend and I thought this was creepy, so we decided to head back to my house. We were also concerned that whoever was in the truck might be a security guard watching over the church property, and we didn’t want any trouble.
As we pulled out onto the road and headed back toward civilization, the truck began to follow us. Just like that, a set of police-style flashing lights turned on atop the truck. Again, this was weird, but we figured our initial assumption was correct: the driver was some sort of rent-a-cop wanting to find out what we were up to. My buddy pulled over, and we waited in the car for the guard to come over and hassle us. We waited and waited, but whoever it was in the truck just sat there.
Eventually, my buddy got annoyed and decided to get out of the car to confront the driver. Thinking this was foolish, I got out as well to provide him with some backup. As soon as he reached the back of the car, the truck roared to life and shot directly at my friend, coming within mere feet of running him down. He jumped onto the back of the car just in time. In a panic, he jumped back into the car, and I followed suit. He exclaimed, “Did you see that guy? He looked all mangled up!” I found it frightening that he was more shaken up by what he had seen behind the wheel than by the fact that he had almost been run over. I assumed the driver was wearing a Freddy Krueger mask or something, but my buddy didn’t think so.
Now really mad and freaked out, my buddy started chasing after the weird truck. We were in a Z28 Camaro, so it shouldn’t have taken long to overtake a beat-up old pickup truck. The area of Albuquerque we were in was open desert, but it was also full of rolling hills and arroyos; it was by no means flat terrain. As the truck went over a hill, it would briefly disappear on the other side until we were able to crest the same hill. We would see the truck, then lose it, then see it again. You get the idea. The truck was kicking up a lot of sand, which sometimes obscured it, so all we could see were its taillights. Surprisingly, the driver and his truck couldn’t be overtaken.
Suddenly, we crested a hill, and the sand cleared, but the truck was nowhere to be found. My buddy slammed on the brakes, and we quickly surveyed the area. It was indeed gone—just gone. There was no sign of it anywhere. We looked at each other in amazement. He exclaimed, “Where did he go?” I responded that I had no idea. Instead of leaving it alone and heading back home, both being young and prone to poor decisions, we decided to search the desert for our mysterious adversary.
After driving around for a bit, we crested another hill and found the truck sitting just on the other side. The game of cat and mouse began again, but this time he was chasing us. My buddy floored it and began racing back toward my subdivision, with the phantom driver right on our tail the whole way. Just as we approached the homes, the truck's lights went out, and it vanished again. Like before, the sand cleared, and it was gone—vanished into thin air. This time, however, we were in a wide-open area with no hills or arroyos for him to duck into.
We stopped and surveyed the area for any sign of the truck, but found nothing. Feeling rattled, we decided not to tempt our luck and headed back home, where it was safe. The following evening, our curiosity got the best of us, and we returned to see if we would encounter the mysterious truck once again. Surprisingly, we drove around for about an hour and found no sign of it. In fact, we frequented the area numerous times after that and never saw it again.
What my buddy and I experienced that night became a topic of debate for some time. We shared the story with our close friends, who were curious but ultimately assumed that my buddy and I had gone out into the desert for a few beers and imagined the whole thing. Honestly, we didn’t touch a drop that night. Was it some jerk trying to spook someone before Halloween? Was it some sort of specter? I can't say for sure. My rational mind wants to think it was just a kook, but I still can’t explain how he appeared and vanished like that. It’s something I will never know the answer to.
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